Strategic growth trough corporate venture capital activities: investment focus and strategies - empirical evidence

Well-established corporations relied more and more on open innovation approach such as the corporate venture capital in order to identify new business opportunities outside their boundaries. The pursuit of new business opportunities is an important source of value creation and competitive advantages in terms of technology and market. The main objectives of using such approach are strategic and aim at complementing in-house research and development, developing synergy with existing business units, enabling new value creation from collaborations with emerging venture-backed companies and facilitating corporate changes, future growth and expansion on emerging markets. We identified four main CVC investment focus and strategies: focus on (1) exploring new technologies vs. (2) exploiting existing technologies or on (3) exploring new markets vs. (4) developing existing markets. We additionally analyze the factors that may influence the choice of the above-mentioned CVC investment focus and strategies

Growth Patterns and Trajectories of New ventures

International audienceIn line with the work of Delmar and Davidsson, (1998) which examines the types of distinct growth patterns that high-growth firms exhibit and how these growth patterns and corresponding firms differ from each other in terms of their demographic affiliation, this paper discusses the existence of different growth trajectories of start-ups. Using financial data from all firms created from 1992 to 2002 in Belgium (N=152064), we identified all those that had grown in less than 10 years above micro-firm level. We developed a data set (N=741) and used Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to identify emerging clusters of trajectories. Overcoming the limitations of the existing literature identified by Delmar et al (2003), the contribution of this research is that it combines going beyond traditional sector-based approaches and using a composite, multi-indicator measure of growth

Growth Patterns and Trajectories of New ventures

International audienceIn line with the work of Delmar and Davidsson, (1998) which examines the types of distinct growth patterns that high-growth firms exhibit and how these growth patterns and corresponding firms differ from each other in terms of their demographic affiliation, this paper discusses the existence of different growth trajectories of start-ups. Using financial data from all firms created from 1992 to 2002 in Belgium (N=152064), we identified all those that had grown in less than 10 years above micro-firm level. We developed a data set (N=741) and used Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to identify emerging clusters of trajectories. Overcoming the limitations of the existing literature identified by Delmar et al (2003), the contribution of this research is that it combines going beyond traditional sector-based approaches and using a composite, multi-indicator measure of growth

Corporate entrepreneurship behaviors: Evidence from teaching cases and reflections for entrepreneurship education

Corporate entrepreneurship (CE) is of utmost importance for organizational development and yet, the literature is scarce in reflecting how CE is taught in entrepreneurship education. In this chapter, we focus on leading case studies on CE and analyze them according to a behavioral (discovery, evaluation legitimation and exploitation) and hierarchical (top, middle and operating roles) aspects. With this analysis we conclude that case studies are a preferred way for entrepreneurship educators to promote experiential learning in the classroom about CE. At the same time, we motivate educators to increasingly focus on the identification of the key actions being taken within CE as well as of where the responsibility of such actions typically falls within organizational roles. We contribute to further our knowledge about CE in entrepreneurship education and reflect the varying CE activities, actors, and behaviors

Pervasiveness of Entrepreneurial Orientation: Do Engagement and Voice Behavior Matter?

A long-standing line of research proves a positive relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and performance of firms. Still, it is surprising, how little we know about the way entrepreneurial orientation is shaped, fostered, developed and maintained within organizations. Wales, Monsen, and Mckelvie (2011) have recently argued that the way entrepreneurial orientation is manifested across the organization may vary vertically across hierarchy levels, horizontally across business units and temporally as an organization develops. Indeed, large diversified firms contain multiple business units that can differ in the level of the entrepreneurial orientation. Therefore organizations that are aiming at properly managing their entrepreneurial posture need to investigate the sources of heterogeneity of manifestations of entrepreneurial orientation at different levels and units of the organization. In this paper we add to the literature by looking into the question why some units within firms may display higher entrepreneurial orientation levels than others and suggest a new look at both the employee engagement and its relation with the business entity’s entrepreneurial orientation. We suggest that the heterogeneity of the entrepreneurial orientation manifestations may be linked to the business unit employees’ work emotional and cognitive engagement and their extra-role voice behaviors. The study is conducted on a sample of business units from an industrial company observed at two different points of time, separately for managers and staff. We find partial confirmation for our hypotheses and we contribute to the literature by showing that different groups of employees contribute to the pervasiveness of entrepreneurial orientation in different ways